Sarah Bryan Miller's review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is out there...and it seems like a hot/cold review that was neither a complete, utter trashing like Carmen last year (when she compared the chorus people to refugees from a Viennese operetta) nor a highly favorable write-up, like last season's Elixir. For those of you who don't know, I am sometimes critical of her write-ups....and so I'm going to offer some thoughts on some of the most egregious bits (her words in block quotes):
In reference to a couple singers' acting:
Neither man will win any awards for acting.
Ok, so you obviously weren't impressed with the acting from these singers. You have the right to that opinion, but can you flesh out WHY they presumably weren't up to par? Sometimes, the readers (not to mention the singers themselves) would like to know something that brought you to that conclusion... Otherwise, your one-sentence, drive-by critique comes off as very snide. [This is one of her repeat offenses.]
On the chorus:
The tiny chorus — just 16 people for Verdi’s big do — sang heroically and well, but it was a little too much to ask, especially in the Anvil Chorus.
As a chorister, I appreciate knowing that we sang well. Trovatore is a taxing sing if you want to do it right. But please... There have been "tiny" choruses (some even tinier) at UAO for season after season. At some point one must accept that the company must spend its performance-fee funds wisely...and the chorus, though small, will work hard to fill the space.
The new "scrappy"?
"Trovatore" doesn’t really work with a chamber orchestra...
That part is my biggest beef of the entire review. Does SBM not realize that a great number of shows done at UAO (the Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti...even the Mozart) are performed with an orchestral reduction? Furthermore, is she completely ignorant that OTSL does the same thing? Their recent Salome was a standard orchestral reduction (60-pieces) from Strauss's original 90-piece orchestration performed only by some of the biggest houses (Met, Lyric, SFO, Houston). How about the fact that John Corigliano himself created a shrunken performance version of Ghosts of Versailles for OTSL and other similarly sized houses? You cannot tell me that the pit at OTSL could accomodate the players in a full orchestration of La Bohème.
Honestly, a larger number of players may have proven too much for the space. From what I listened to in the house during the sitzprobe and some rehearsals, the reduction filled the acoustic space, yet never covered the singers. That is what you want. UAO is a small house...and why SBM cannot accept small-house limitations (no matter how many times she feigns sympathy for them) is beyond me. Did she just now start to care that Trovatore was reduced...or is this just a clever new way of saying that the orchestra was "scrappy"?
Credit, where it's due...
I will give her credit that she was favorable to the conductor, half the singers and the director's approach to the presentation of this dramatically-challenged opera. This time around, she mercifully abandoned the following conventions:
- like, omg, those wigs/supertitles like totally blew!!1!
- i know it's not as cool the Met or even OTSL....but gawd can't it be?!?
- i'm just so flummoxed that they repeatedly ignore my pearls of wisdom, and they won't improve until they do.
Could it be that she's realized that UAO is going to continue what it does best? I know I'm somewhat of a shill, but I think even she sees the writing on the wall. But I can be (and have been) wrong.
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